


Choices

by SylvanWitch



Category: Stargate: Atlantis
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-26
Updated: 2012-03-26
Packaged: 2017-11-02 13:04:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/369265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanWitch/pseuds/SylvanWitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elizabeth Weir is to diplomacy as Laura Cadman is to detonation.  Sometimes, there are no good choices.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Choices

**Author's Note:**

> There are mild spoilers for Season 2's _Critical Mass_ herein.

The leader of the Atlantis expedition—or self-appointed Governor of Atlantis, a title the rumor mill hadn't yet stopped grinding ( _goddamn Kavanagh and his supercilious smirk_ )—had been in her room for fewer than ten minutes when the warning ping sounded from the Ancient intercom to let her know that someone was without the door, wanting in...or at the very least, wanting something.

 _Someone always wants something,_ she thought, her familiar mantra these days.

She bit back an impatient sigh, squared her shoulders as if the person awaiting her response could see her through the heavy door, and said, "Who is it?"

If her voice cracked a touch at the end, she was to be forgiven. The latest crisis had kept her up for thirty-eight hours, and Weir was tired.

 _It's not the hours that are making you tired,_ she thought. Out loud, she repeated, "I asked who it is," allowing some of her carefully corralled impatience to escape.

The ping sounded again, somehow more insistent, though she knew it was ridiculous to personify Atlantis' functions, a fact she'd had little luck inculcating in the more impressionable members of her team, who insisted that the city talked, reacted, and even emoted.

"Identify yourself," she ordered. _Or get the hell away from my door._

"Elizabeth."

Not an identifier at all, but only her own name, a single word, bare of all but the faintest inflection, the four familiar syllables taking on a meaning that made her shiver. She crossed her arms, trying to rub away the gooseflesh that had sprung up in the wake of her name in that voice: a command, not a request.

She reached out to release the door lock and was ashamed to find the hand shaking. Taking a deep breath, Elizabeth closed her eyes, marshaled her control, made the motion, this time without a betraying quaver.

Lieutenant Laura Cadman walked by her without a word, brushing her with a glance, a shoulder, and then pivoting on her heels to stand in the center of Elizabeth's room, head up, eyes straight ahead, hands behind her back and feet apart in that casual soldier's stance Elizabeth knew was a lie. She'd watched Sheppard enough to know that the ease masked a lethal readiness.

She closed the door, locked it behind her, turned to face fully—and for the first time alone since the expedition interviews—Lieutenant Laura Cadman.

Cadman, she thought. That's what all the soldiers called her. "What can I do for you this evening, Lieutenant Cadman," she said, falling back on her own kind of lie, the diplomatic promise of formality inherent in every title. In this case, rank would save her.

"You can call me Cadman, if you'd like. Or Laura. Whichever is fine."

Startled too soon into betraying her surprise—it really had been a terribly long day— Elizabeth paused just a second longer than was strictly polite.

"What can I do for you, Lieutenant?" And there was a sardonic emphasis on the title to match the sudden gleam in Elizabeth's eye. She may have been surprised by Cadman's cheek, but she had won battles of semantics with far more at stake than what she was beginning to suspect had been tabled tonight for her consideration.

"I think you know why I'm here, Elizabeth." She hadn't relaxed, hadn't shifted out of her military position, but there was an insouciance in the lieutenant's posture that telegraphed the woman's intentions.

"What I know is that it is far too late, and I am far too tired, for these games, Lieutenant. State the purpose of your visit, or I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

"I'm here because you wanted me to be, Elizabeth." And now there was a definite suggestiveness to her stance.

"I don't recall asking you to come to my quarters, Lieutenant."

Cadman shook her head, her hair sliding sinuously, catching and refracting the dim light.

 _It looks good down like that,_ Elizabeth thought, and then frowned. She had to get better control of herself than this.

"Don't be coy, Elizabeth. It doesn't suit you. I saw the look you gave me as you left the conference room. You didn't want to be alone."

Elizabeth's frown deepened, "What I want or don't want is not up for discussion, Lieutenant. I think you'd better leave."

Cadman came forward, toward the door, and Elizabeth moved aside to let the woman pass. She was already composing the letter of censure she would be forwarding to Colonel Sheppard the next morning, which may be why she failed to realize until too late that what she'd taken for retreat was actually regrouping.

Cadman had her against the wall before Elizabeth could even formulate a shouted response to the action. She was pressing her breasts into Elizabeth's own, ghosting her hot breath— _sweet,_ Elizabeth thought irrationally, like clove gum—over Elizabeth's cheek as she leaned in to whisper,

"Don't play with me, Elizabeth. You need me to exorcise the demons. I can help."

Elizabeth shuddered, gasped as the tip of a hot tongue rimmed the outer shell of her ear, struggled to breathe, to find her voice, to say—

"Yes."

That was not her voice, couldn't be _her_ voice. Elizabeth Weir was the epitome of collected calm, of grace under pressure, of dispassionate good judgment and carefully chosen turns of phrase. She was not a quivering, needful thing, cold with fear and wet with atavistic hunger, reduced to one syllable of raw pleading.

If Elizabeth Weir were the delicate balance of a spinning plate, Laura Cadman was the explosive force of a bullet shattering the airborne clay.

And at that single word of dubious consent, wrung from a throat so tight with unshed tears and longing that she would not find voice again to form words, not for a long while, Laura Cadman broke Elizabeth Weir open.

In a move designed to disorient an enemy combatant, Cadman spun Elizabeth away from the wall and around, propelling her backward toward the bed in a controlled fall, slowing her before she could strike the mattress too hard, but also preventing her escape by the simple tactic of pinning her down. Before she could protest, before she could think to protest, she was prone, Cadman's knee between her thighs, her hands on Elizabeth's ubiquitous tee, pushing it upward and then pulling it off.

Hands that did the delicate work of disarming bombs divested her next of her bra and then slide over her sensitive nipples, peaking them and bringing a low whimper from Elizabeth's throat.

"Shh," Cadman said. "It's too soon yet for that."

The same quick hands made light work of her button and zipper, stripping her of her slacks and socks—her boots had been the first casualty of her exhaustion and were just inside the door, one tipped over, trailing its laces. She shivered as a casual hand trailed over her belly just above the waistband of her sensible white panties, the high-cut over the hip her only concession to feminine frivolity.

Cadman had backed up off of the bed to drape the slacks over her desk chair, and Elizabeth looked down the length of her own body to examine her. She was standing next to Elizabeth's neat desk and looking steadily at the head of the Atlantis expedition, sprawled, nearly naked, across her narrow, lonely bed.

"Take them off," the lieutenant commanded, adopting again the treacherous posture.

Elizabeth's hands were halfway to her waistband when Cadman said, "Slow down. Do it slowly."

She felt the heat of her own hands against her stomach, the faint flutter at her core as she slid a finger beneath the waistband and began to skim the panties down. Just as her palm brushed the stiff curls at her slit, Cadman said, "Touch yourself. Slide your middle finger along your clit—slowly."

Elizabeth inhaled sharply, maybe to protest, but Cadman was implacable, and she knew she'd find no mercy there.

She dipped her finger between her legs and felt the flutter strengthen to a pulsing that drove her gathered breath from her and made her spread her legs.

"I said slowly, Elizabeth," and there was a dark warning there that made the pulse beneath her finger leap.

She threw her head back, struggled to think of anything but the feel of her finger, the weight of the woman's gaze on her, but the feeling was all of her, now, consuming, annihilating, and she found herself yearning toward the plunge for its utter absence of any thought.

Cadman's voice brought her away from the edge.

"Do you want to come?" It was cold, even hostile, and Elizabeth's eyes blinked open, head turning toward the woman who still stood with insidious ease next to her tidy workspace.

"I asked you a question, Elizabeth. Do you want to come?"  
She struggled to focus, to figure out the trap, for there had to be a trap—all words were traps, multiple meanings, multivalent layers. Yes, she wanted to come, wanted the oblivion of orgasm to rob her of the decisions she'd had to make that day. And no, she didn't want to come, not like this, not with her own hand, not like a whore spread before an indifferent master.

"I don't know," she whispered, and her hand stilled in its sliding rhythm.

"It's an easy question, isn't it?" Cadman asked, with a lilt that made Elizabeth wary.

"No," she managed, voice hoarse, throat dry from panting open-mouthed at her own pleasure. She was ashamed beyond words.

"Why not?"

Elizabeth wouldn't speak, couldn't betray her need. It was still too early in negotiations. And then she laughed, a bitter whisper of sound in the still room. She was naked with her hand between her legs; she had nothing to bargain with anymore.

"If you can't decide something simple like this—whether or not to bring yourself pleasure at your own hand—what business do you have leading Atlantis?"

Elizabeth closed her eyes, shame drowning her as surely as if the city had sunk beneath the sea without its shield. She had no shield now. She was naked.

She shook her head, felt a tear sear its way down her cheek.

"You've made your point," she managed, choking on the words, on the bile that rose from her stomach to burn its way out of the back of her throat.

There was silence from the center of her room.

"Please," she whispered, broken.

And then there were hot hands on her thighs and whispered words against her lips,

"Sometimes there are no good choices, Elizabeth. What you need to learn is to let yourself do what must be done to survive in this city."

And a hand covered her own, frozen all these minutes between her drying thighs, and began the rhythm once more, more insistent this time and infinitely better. The tongue between her teeth laved the roof of her mouth and then teeth were nipping her lower lip, grazing her jaw, nibbling along her neck and down into the hollow between her breasts, where it traced a path of icy fire up one rounded breast, around the hard, high nipple, and then fastened there to suckle and devour.

Elizabeth moaned loudly as the hand on her own abandoned her and then shouted when two fingers plunged into her in one long, hard motion. She pulled her legs up and off of the bed, bucked her hips toward the questing fingers, and then shouted a wordless babble as the fingers curled just so and brought her all at once to that chasm, into which she threw herself screaming.

She came to herself again with tears coursing coldly into one ear and soothing nonsense pouring softly into the other.

She sniffled, wiped her free hand—the other was trapped beneath Cadman's compact weight—across her streaming eyes, and looked at Cadman.

"I don't even know what to call you." She was still a diplomat, even if words had failed her for awhile there. Names were important; they were power. "Lieutenant" obviously hadn't worked. Maybe—

"Laura works."

"Okay, Laura," Elizabeth said. "What now?"

Laura smiled. "That's your choice, Doctor Weir."

Elizabeth laughed, just a soft chuff of breath, but a laugh nonetheless. _She's good,_ she thought. Aloud, she said, "I'd like you to stay."

There was a moment of silence. Then,

"And maybe take your clothes off."

Laura laughed again, louder this time, and Elizabeth was surprised to see how young the woman looked when she did that.

"Okay." She rose with an easy grace and began to divest herself in quick, efficient movements, of her BDUs.

"What made you follow me to my quarters, Laura?" She tried to make it casual, but her throat was raw from screaming and it couldn't be made to behave.

"You needed me, Elizabeth, and I wanted to help."

"Do you always help by assaulting the people you're aiding?"

Laura grinned wickedly. "I'm a Marine, ma'am."

"Fair enough," replied Elizabeth, whose answering grin had something of the devil in it, too. "Then let me ask you this. Why did you think I'd let you in?" And there was once again the fluidity of language that Elizabeth so admired, the multivalence of that single word "in."

Laura's face sobered, became immobile with the same kind of wary care that Elizabeth had so often observed in Sheppard. _Do they teach them that in the military?_ she thought, watching Laura's impassive expression.

"I knew that you wouldn't. And I knew that you had to. Does that make sense?"

Elizabeth's face became a mirror, reflecting only Laura's own inscrutable mask, as she answered, "Yes, it does. What does this mean for the future?"

Laura's shrug was eloquent. "We're not defusing a bomb or discovering a traitor here, Elizabeth. It's not life or death."

 _It could be,_ Elizabeth thought, the weight of her responsibility somehow heavier for the young woman who had now rejoined her in her bed.

"Although," Laura teased, as though sensing the somber turn of Elizabeth's thoughts, "I might die of horniness if you don't help me with my problem."

This startled a chuckle out of Elizabeth, who rolled to her side to find herself eye-to-eye with the mock-serious Laura.

"I might need a refresher course on where the fuse is..." she began, lowering her head to Laura's left breast and running her tongue over it lightly.

"It's a few degrees south of there," Laura said, a little breathless.

Elizabeth ran her hand slowly up the line between Laura's thighs, until the younger woman rolled onto her back and spread her legs a little, obligingly.

"I think you've got it now," she whispered a few seconds later.

Hot breath was the harbinger of hoarse words in Laura's ear. "What would you like me to do, Laura?"

Laura's answering laughed turned to a groan as the hand between her legs shifted slightly, but she found breath to answer:

"There are no bad choices here."

***Fin.***

  
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.

This story archived at <http://www.wraithbait.com/viewstory.php?sid=6779>  



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